I rarely do logic puzzles though I like them and I thought I was pretty good at them until I came here. My success rate is good but my speed is nowhere near what people get on average here and the record times are beyond belief to me. How can someone finish a puzzle in under 2 mins that take the average person over 10 minutes to finish? Just going through the clues the first time and marking the sheet takes me over 2 minutes. Obviously, the ones who can finish so quickly are very experienced and there is a trick to it, that is, to do it so incredibly fast. Got any pointers for a slow poke like me.

After posting this thread I went and did a puzzle and realized as I was solving it that my question is basically impossible to answer. It would take a manual to cover ever thing you need to consider in order to do logic puzzles with extreme speed. Nevermind..I guess speed will come with experience.

While experience and clue-specific techniques, like you said, are significant factors, there are also some tricks. One that comes to mind is that you can submit your answer as soon as you fill in green circles for the first set of rows (all the way across). In other words, crossing off false combinations (anywhere) and adding circles for the lower parts of the grid only needs to be done to the extent that it helps you figure out the true combinations for the first set of rows. I too was nowhere near average when I started, and though experience allowed me to get much closer to average, I don't think I've ever got better than average when I fill in the whole grid. (Even using this I can't get much better than average, though.)

As for the unbelievably fast times, I think many of those are done using some amount of pattern recognition. Basically, although the site randomizes names (I think), there are a limited number of puzzles that are truly different, and some people play so much and have such a good memory that they can recognize which puzzle they are doing part way through and just fill the rest in from memory. The site creator mentioned that, although pattern recognition isn't exactly cheating, the next major update will probably include changes intended to prevent it.

Thanks for the tip and the explaination. I doubt that I will ever or at least rarely do these puzzles in the average time either. I guess I need to quit trying to be so competitive and just have a good time. Good luck to ya!

I routinely do much below average times even when I get a new puzzle without any benefit of using advanced logic skills to lower my times. You just need to get experience. It also helps me to focus on harder puzzles. I never start puzzles that have an average time below about 600 seconds and a success rate above about 50%. The key is understanding and harnessing the power of symbolic logic. Much can be gained by understanding how the clues really give more information than one might see on the surface. All the clues can be reduced to symbolic logic type equations, such as A>B or Of A & B, 1 is C and 1 is D. When I started solving logic puzzles on this site, I actually wrote these equations down and reached conclusions from them that allowed me to begin filling in the grid, both X's and O's. After awhile I didn't need to write them down to get the information from them. That saves a lot of time. There are other logic "tricks" that are useful. After all, they call them logic puzzles for a good reason. If you try this method, I would suggest playing as a guest at first as this method of seeing the logic patterns takes a lot of time until you begin to catch on.
Good Luck

When I want to get fast times, I choose puzzles that have success rates of above 70%, and average times below 400 seconds, by clicking on the new game button. If you start with those, you won't get so frustrated.

There are only so many kinds of clues, and you will become faster at comprehending those. You will be faster if you skim the clues. Such as, instead of reading all of:

The scoutmaster who taught the half-hitch knot has an anniversary after Liam Neeson's cousin.

Just skim to get "half-hitch" "after" "Liam". Then, put your x's in the boxes.

When I first started I was really good at doing the puzzles, but not so good at being fast. I think the fastest (1) don't fill in all the X's - I'm training myself to not do that (2) do certain types of clues first to get the maximum info on the board fast (3) have great memories - there are lots of times I go through the clues a second time and realize that I already knew that info (4) and do so many of them they just react. As I've done more of them, I get faster. I do the simple ones (with high completion rates and low averages times) faster than average, but it still takes me longer, though less than average, on the more complicated ones. I don't hunt for specific puzzles though. I do whatever comes up. If I only did the ones I was fastest at, my average time would go down. If I only did the hardest ones, my average points would go up. Since that would get boring, I aimed to stay at a 100% completion rate. A snow storm killed that stat the other day, so now I just enjoy the puzzles, which is where I was when I found the site originally. Not that it wouldn't be cool to get a medal someday, but I normally have too much to do in real life to be much of a competitor at my current speeds.